Anglo-Indian cooking influences

In her book The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, Hannah Glasse details how to make a curry dish:

She also mentions the source of Piccalilli:
To make India pickle. TO a gallon of vinegar one pound of garlick, and three quarters of a pound of long pepper, a pint of mustard seed, one pound of ginger, and two ounces of tumerick; the garlick must be laid in salt three days, then wip'd clean and dry'd in the sun; the long pepper broke, and the mustard seed bruised; mix all together in the vinegar, then take two large hard cabbages, and two cauliflowers, cut them in quarters, and salt them well; let them lie three days, and dry them in the sun. N.B. The ginger must lie twenty four hours in salt and water, then cut small and laid in salt three days.
There is also a way to make paco lilla, or Indian pickle, the same the mangos come over in.


There is a dish for Indian boiled fowl:
To make a pellow the Indian way. TAKE three pounds of rice, pick and wash it very clean, put into a cullender, and let it drain very dry; take three quarters of a pound of butter, and put it into a pan over a slow fire till it melts, then put in the rice and cover it over very close, that it may keep the stream in; add to it a little salt, some whole pepper, half a dozen blades of mace, and a few cloves. You must put it in a little water to keep it from burning, then stir it up very often, and let it stew till the rice is soft. Boil two fowls, and a fine piece of bacon or about two pounds weight as common, cut the bacon in two pieces, lay it in the dish with the fowls, cover it over with the rice, and garnish it with about half a dozen hard eggs and a dozen of onions whole fried and very brown. NOTE, This is the true Indian way of dressing them.


Two other dishes seem to have found their way across the oceans to England.
Firstly khichri, a rice and bean or rice and lentil dish, which seems to have been adapted by Scottish colonists by the adding of smoked haddock which later became kedgeree, a staple of Victorian breakfast tables.
Secondly a pepper broth called milagu tanni, which in the West had tumeric and meat added to become mulligatawny.

Subadar in the Indian Army

Sake Dean Mahomet became associated with the British in India when he was a camp follower at the age of 11 in 1769. he quickly rose through the ranks and became a Subadar in the Bengal Army, serving under the quartermaster of the 3rd Bengal (European) Regiment Godfrey Evan Baker. Mahomet accompanied Baker when the Irishman – under a cloud of suspicion following allegations of corruption and bribery – returned to Ireland in the 1780s.
A Subadar, or captain, was the highest rank an Indian could obtain. Pictured above is a Subadar (in red jackets faced with yellow) being saluted by a Havidar, or sergeant. A sepoy is in the background. This print is contemporary with the time Sake Dean Mahomet spent in the Bengal Army of the East India Company.
The Bengal Army was the army of the Presidency of Bengal, one of the three Presidencies of British India. Although based in Bengal in eastern India, the Presidency stretched across northern India and the Himalayas all the way to the North West Frontier Province with Afghanistan. It was predominantky and Indian-born army with Eurooean officers.

The Hon. Basil Cochrane and other Nabobs

The sixth son of the 8th Earl of Dundonald, Basil Cochrane was born in April 1753. As a younger son Cochrane was born with limited prospects. In 1769 young Basil was placed as a clerk in the East India Company based in Madras, and when he returned to England forty years later was fabulously wealthy. This was due to contracts he negotiated to supply the Royal Navy in the Eastern oceans, and the size of these contracts raised more than an eyebrow in Parliament. So Cochrane’s first task on returning to England had been to defend his wealth from charges of embezzlement – something of an occupational hazard for East India Company men. Cochrane's mansion in Portman Square was reputed to be the largest and so reflected others around the square; imposing front doors opened onto a marbled main hall, from which a delicate staircase swept majestically upwards towards the reception rooms on the first floor. 

Colonial adventurers like Cochrane were often referred to as Nabobs, a corruption of the Indian title of Nawab. Frowned on for their acquisition of wealth by dubious means, on their return they had settled in some numbers in the newer developments to the west end of London and away from the traditional centres of power. A common fear was that these individuals – the Nabobs, their agents, and those who took their bribes – would use their wealth and influence to corrupt Parliament. A number of prominent Company men underwent inquiries and impeachments on charges of corruption and misrule in India. Warren Hastings, first Governor-General of India, was impeached in 1788 and acquitted in 1795 after a seven year-long trial. And Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive of India, was forced to defend himself against charges brought against him in the House of Commons. The portrait of Cochrane (above) was painted by John Smart in India in 1789. Below is the home of Clive of India at 45 Berkeley Square,a few minutes south of Portman Square.

The East India Company

The East India Company was a joint-stock company formed for pursuing trade with the East Indies but which ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent. The Company was granted a Royal Charter by Queen Elizabeth I in 1600, making it the oldest among several similarly formed companies. Shares in the company were owned by wealthy merchants and aristocrats,with the government owning no shares and so having only indirect control. The Company traded mainly in cotton, silk, indigo dye, salt, saltpetre, tea and opium, and also came to rule large areas of India, exercising military power and assuming administrative functions.
In 1757 Robert Clive led Company forces to victory against Siraj Ud Daulah – the last independent Nawab of Bengal, Bihar, and Midnapore – at the Battle of Plassey resulting in the conquest of Bengal. More wars against Indian rulers followed, culminating in the defeat of Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan, the rulers of the Kingdom of Mysore, in 1799. Among its military commanders at the time was one Arthur Wellesley (later the 1st Duke of Wellington).
Yet the Company was not always profitable. In putting down resisting states, it was clear that the Company was incapable of governing the vast expanse of the captured territories without great expense. With the Bengal famine of 1770, in which one-third of the local population died, military and administrative costs mounted due to the ensuing drop in labour productivity. This led to the passing of the Tea Act in 1773, which gave the Company greater autonomy in running its trade in the American colonies, and allowed it an exemption from tea import duties which its colonial competitors were required to pay. When the American colonists were told of the Act they tried to boycott it, triggering the Boston Tea Party and the American Revolution. And Americans have had a distrust of tea ever since!
Still, by 1810 the Company was at it zenith, with a vast shipping fleet controlling much of the trade between Europe and the Orient, and the Company's rule extended to India, Burma, Malaya, Singapore, and British Hong Kong, with a fifth of the world's population under its trading influence from the Company headquaters (above) in Leadenhall Street. The Company flag, after 1801, is below.